


Did You Know You Used To Be My Hero

by MeredithBrody



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: F/M, Post Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 09:16:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeredithBrody/pseuds/MeredithBrody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shortly after announcing that Erika is pregnant. Jon visits his father's grave to work through his demons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Did You Know You Used To Be My Hero

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet is dedicated to my grandad Peacock. I miss him more and more every day, and today I just really wished I could see him and tell him Wigan won the double and watch that smirk he used to get whenever Wigan beat Leeds at anything and just. I really miss him. It's been almost 7 years since he died.
> 
> Title is from the song "Perfect" by Simple Plan. Also the song that inspired this.

He hadn’t visited this spot in many years, more than he cared to count. Some days he had wanted to come, but some internal shame or sadness would stop him from coming. This windy hillside in their hometown was more often than not the last place he wanted to be. Especially in the last few years, when he had done things he was less than proud of.

There was always that bit of wonder in his mind, would his father have approved of the decisions he’d had to make. Of all the sacrifices he’d had to make over the years. Since he’d returned to Earth he’s come to this graveyard many times, but he’d never made it all the way to this spot before. He’d stopped feet away, then turned and left. Not sure what to say. He still didn’t know what to say today, but this time he needed to say something. He wouldn’t be back here, not for a long time, and he had things he needed to say.

He stopped at the headstone, reaching out to feel the freezing cold marble beneath his hand. That was as close to seeing him as he could get. He took a breath, then another. Struggling even to think of how to start. He remembered Erika’s advice, that he should just start like it was any conversation, but that felt strange. He took one more breath then close his eyes, following Erika’s advice. “Hi dad. I’m sorry I haven’t been to talk to you for a while.”

He trailed off and shook his head. That was an understatement, one of the biggest understatements he’d ever uttered. It had been 8 years, and much had changed in the interim. He couldn’t even really start at the beginning, he wanted to start with the recent changes then work backwards. The changes he was proud of. “Things are changing for me, rapidly. In a few weeks I’m going to be a father myself. Maybe a little later than you and mom had planned for me. I wanted to wait until I had the right woman, and then we had to wait for the right time.” He smiled to himself and shook his head. Another understatement, but an accurate one this time. They had had to wait, they’d always had to wait.

“I think you’d like Erika. She’s a true explorer.” He chuckled a little as he thought of Erika, still telling him that she wanted to go back out there, even though they both knew she was happy on Earth too. The scars of the last decade wore on her, too. He wasn’t alone in the bad things. Hers, comparatively, were probably worse, and he hadn’t always been there like he should have been. “She’s been through some horrible things the last few years, but she’s come through every single one of them, and been stronger for it. She’s made me stronger too.”

He looked out over the country that he could see from the hillside and took a breath of the air. Thinking about how much had changed since he’d last visited. “The last time I was here was before the mission to the Expanse, I was still what you wanted me to be then. I knew that I was going to have to give up a lot to save Earth, but I didn’t think I’d have to give up as much as I did.” He’d said all those years ago that he had lost something. The war started not long afterwards, and he never found that naive, hopeful part of himself again. That had changed him. He was not the Jonathan Archer he’d once been. “I lost a part of me, and I still don’t think I’ve found it. I’m a different man to the one who stood here 8 years ago.”

He looked up to the sky and slipped his hands into his pockets, trying desperately not to cry as he thought about the things that haunted him. The problem of not being good enough for his father, not living up to the legacy that he had been left with. “There are nights where I lay in bed and I wonder what you’d think of me. It’s been 38 years since you died, probably 40 years since we were last able to have a conversation.” He hadn’t thought about that in a long time, and he had never truly admitted his biggest fear. That the genetic disease would strike him down too. He’d never even told Erika that scared him, because he didn’t want to worry her any further than she already was. “I worry every day that I’m going to go the same way, and leave Erika and the baby alone. I know that Clarke’s starts showing in your 40’s, and in a few months I’ll be 50. But I still worry.” He began purposefully pushing that thought out of his mind, and thinking more on the man Henry Archer would have liked him to be, which brought him back to thinking about Erika.

“You know what makes me laugh now. The day Erika and I reconnected I told her that when I looked at her I saw what you had wanted for me. I saw the explorer. The person who truly believed that there was good out there. I still believe that, but that day I didn’t, she taught me to believe again.” He wondered if he’d ever thanked Erika for everything she had done for him. He needed to do that one day if he hadn’t. No matter what he did, he still held himself up on that level. “So I still hold myself to that ideal. That person I imagine you’d want me to be. I remember all those conversations we had when I was 8 or 9 where you would say you wanted me to be the first captain for your engine. Well you got that wish. Your daughter-in-law was the second.” He smiled at that. He and Erika. The first two captains with his fathers engine. Keeping it in the family. Maybe the baby would captain the next set of ships.

“Did I mention Erika and I were having a baby. It was a bit of a surprise. We picked out the names many years ago, but I don’t think either of us expected that we’d ever need them. If we have a boy he’s being named for you, and for my best friend. If we have a girl she’s being named after Erika’s aunt Serena and her best friend.”

He stopped talking and slipped his hands deeper in his pockets, hunching his shoulders slightly against the cold and hoping that he would feel something soon. Some break that would tell him that this was OK now. That he didn’t need to force himself to stay here. That he had gotten all of his demons out. “Honestly, I don’t know why I’m here. Some sign from the universe that you forgive me for not being the perfect son, the son you wanted. Did I come here to apologise for everything I’ve done that you would judge me for. Or maybe I’m just here because when I was young you were my hero, and I’ve had to make my way in the universe alone.” He hated to put it that way. He’d always hoped his father would be there, following his achievements with that glint of pride in his eye, but he had never gotten that, and now all he had was this headstone and his words. “I want to be able to tell the baby all about you, but I need to stop blaming myself and feeling guilty. I’m sorry, dad. I’m sorry that I’m not the son you would have wanted, but I hope you’ve be proud of me regardless.”

“Jonathan, it’s getting cold.” He heard shouted from back towards the gate, and he turned only momentarily to see Erika walking over to him. She stopped beside him and wrapped an arm around his back. After a second he heard her mumbling, and realised she was saying a prayer. Later he’d ask her what it was, but right now he was just touched that she’d think of that, despite knowing his family had never been religious. After a few seconds she took a breath and leant against him a little more. “Come on, Jon. We need to get back, it’ll be dark soon.” She prodded him, and he slipped an arm around her shoulder.

He looked back at the headstone once more and bowed his head in his own silent prayer to whatever deity there might be that his father was at least safe, happy and whole. Now Jon needed to focus on his own life, his own family. He could tell the stories of his father, and bring his children here, but he would never need to come and confess here. He had done his deed to the dead. The living mattered more now.

_“Do not pity the dead, pity the living, and above all those who live without love.” Albus Dumbledore - Harry Potter._


End file.
